A study of public housing policy for the elderly in Hong Kong

Abstract

Since the population in Hong Kong is expected to continue with an ageing trend, the elderly housing becomes an increasing concern of the society. Population aging, the sharp increase of life expectancy and the elderly dependency ratio, inadequate supply of elderly housing and the shortage of proper facilities and services for the elderly residents are the critical issues on the public housing for the elderly in Hong Kong.

Based on the above situation, it is a critical time to draw the attention to the elderly housing policy on the needs of the elderly to evaluate the effectiveness of the current public housing policy for the elderly and recommends changes to the policy for improving elderly housing provision. The aging theories of the social gerontology are applied in relation to the housing need for the elderly and this research mainly focuses on the current public housing policy and the related housing programs provided by Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) and Hong Kong Housing Society (HKHS) in terms of the flat design, community planning and facilities and so on. The importance of the formal support and the informal support to the elderly are also discussed in this research.

Accordingly, the research is divided into several parts Firstly, the goal and objectives are briefly identified and studied. Secondly, the scope of study is listed out in order to provide a general outline for the dissertation. After that, the methodology and organization of study are illustrated. The primary data and the secondary data are collected. In order to have an in-depth understanding on the key issues of the public housing policy for the elderly and the needs of the elderly residents, both the quantitative and the qualitative research methods are used for this research.

In this research, the result from the face to face questionnaire surveys with the elderly residents in Sham Shui Po District and the interview with the District Councilor Member of the same district shows that there are rooms for HKHA’s improvement of elderly housing policies. In addition, it indicates that the formal support is able to meet the environmental and psychological need of the elderly. However, the elderly mainly rely on the informal support i.e. the family and friends to meet their psychological need. Therefore, the formal support and informal support should be integrated in the housing policy for the elderly to achieve the concepts of “Ageing in place” and “Healthy Aging”.